Mate

Affiliations

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First appearance

Created by

Yog-Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They have trod earth's fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread.

Contents

Description

Like many Lovecraftian gods, Yog-Sothoth has many different appearances throughout the various stories of the mythos, by various authors. However, there seems to be a common agreement that Yog-Sothoth visually manifests as a mass of glowing orbs, with eyes or tendrils in some versions, and in others simply the orbs.

It is heavily implied, if not outright stated, that Yog-Sothoth is omniscient, and is locked outside the universe, meaning he can know and see all of space-time all at once, which means there is no secret hidden from Yog-Sothoth.

Resurrection

One ritual involving Yog-Sothoth makes use of the "essential salts" of a deceased individual to resurrect them from the dead. The incantations involved with this are transcribed approximately as follows:

Y'AI'NG'NGAHYOG-SOTHOTHH'EE-L'GEBF'AI THRODOGUAAAHH

The incantation to put down the resurrected individual is the partial syllabic reverse of the first, and reads:

OGTHROD AI'FGEB'L-EE'HYOG-SOTHOTH'NGAH'NG AI'YZHRO

Incarnation

In one case involving the town of Dunwich, Yog-Sothoth is known to have been summoned for the purposes of impregnating a human female, who then gave birth to two partially-human children. The summoner was the husband/"father" of the Whateley family, who was known to have stood on a hill in a circle of stones with the Necronomicon while shouting the name of Yog-Sothoth from the summit.

Quotes

“

"Randolph Carter", IT seemed to say, "MY manifestations on your planet's extension, the Ancient Ones, have sent you as one who would lately have returned to small lands of dream which he had lost, yet who with greater freedom has risen to greater and nobler desires and curiosities. You wished to sail up golden Oukranos, to search out forgotten ivory cities in orchid-heavy Kled, and to reign on the opal throne of Ilek-Vad, whose fabulous towers and numberless domes rise mighty toward a single red star in a firmament alien to your earth and to all matter. Now, with the passing of two Gates, you wish loftier things. You would not flee like a child from a scene disliked to a dream beloved, but would plunge like a man into that last and inmost of secrets which lies behind all scenes and dreams. What you wish, I have found good; and I am ready to grant that which I have granted eleven times only to beings of your planet - five times only to those you call men, or those resembling them. I am ready to shew you the Ultimate Mystery, to look on which is to blast a feeble spirit. Yet before you gaze full at that last and first of secrets you may still wield a free choice, and return if you will through the two Gates with the Veil still unrent before your eyes.

Behind the Mythos

George Olshevsky and Bruce Chilton named the nonconvex snub polyhedra after some other Great Old Ones, with the Small retrosnub icosicosidodecahedron as "Yog-Sothoth", them being the first to build an accurate physical representation of the polyhedron.[1]